The Romney Foreign Policy Pivot Is Now in Effect

As Crowley points out, Mitt Romney was pretty well-poised to seize on Obama’s open mic moment, in which he told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he’d have “more flexibility” on missile defense after his re-election. Romney dug in on the issue Monday, hammering the White House on the stump and calling Russia “without question our number one geopolitical foe” on CNN. Today, Romney’s foreign policy advisers followed up with an open letter to Obama, painting the flexibility gaffe as indicative of broader “weakness and inconstancy” in the President’s global stance from Iran to Cuba.

The individual critiques are fairly familiar, but one line at the end stuck out:

In a democracy, no issues are more important than those pertaining to national security. The American people deserve full and frank answers to these questions, or at least the same level of candor you have offered to Russia’s leaders.

National security is of course a priority for any President. And this is a letter from Romney’s foreign policy team, not the entire campaign. But until very recently the most important issue in Romney’s campaign narrative was the economy. Whether it’s a slightly sunnier domestic outlook or a confluence of events thrusting foreign policy back into the conversation–Obama’s hot mic and creeping war fatigue among them–Romney appears to be revising his narrative back to something closer to his original vision.